Ksy Tries: The TV Roundup #11

Easter egg hunt! Find the eight hidden eggs.

Happy Easter Sunday? I hope you and yours are safe and healthy and may you continue to be in this increasingly dystopic world.

Jane The Virgin | S1E01-E06

This was a comfort binge. I am in dire need of a cute English language rom-com or family show -English language anything really - to watch while I ate so I had the option of just listening and not pay much attention to the screen. But there are SO MANY available options and analysis paralysis hit me like a ton of bricks. My go-to is usually Jeopardy but I'm running out of episodes to watch on NF and I'm not really in the mood to look at pretty houses and get house envy in BBC's The World's Most Extraordinary Homes. Then I remembered Jane The Virgin. Rewatching Jane and Rafael fall in love felt like a good use of my time and this show always gave me good vibes. I skipped most of the murder mystery bits, Petra's machinations, and the family drama though. Good times.

The Sword and The Brocade | E31-36

The problem with smart people is that they think too much. And that's basically what happened for the majority of episodes 31 to 34, where the two leads obviously care for each other but won't communicate. There's an element of pride and fear of rejection at play that keeps them from laying it all out in the open and asking the other person to love them. Finally, the dam bursts in episode 35 and we get our confession, first kiss scene, and some bow chika wow wow. Shiyi's cherry is popped and the marriage is consummated at last. And then the merrily wed cuteness we'd all been waiting for. Yay!

The only other plot point that interested me was Shiyi realizing that she no longer hates Madame Luo and her narcissistic step sister. She recognizes that both of them were products of a misogynistic system that pits woman against woman and in they end the women all lose. It's a downer but evidence of further character growth for Shiyi. Down with the patriarchy!

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime aka Slime Isekai | E01-E27

"What if we make the lead character a slime? No, I mean a literal slime. Hear me out."

This is how I imagine the pitch went. It's...odd. I'm not even talking about the slime protagonist, although it IS a factor. The story features a mismash of various fantastical creatures: orc, troll, demon, goblin, dwarf, dragon, etc. The plot isn't anything I haven't read before (minus the slime part) but something about this particular story felt slightly off. I can't quite put my finger on it. Perhaps you could call it quirky and that's the charm? To be fair, it IS enjoyable enough and very easy to watch. It's got humorous moments and I managed to watch a full season (24 episodes of <20 minutes each) before I got tired of it. My sister LOVES it and had been raving to me about it for a while now. She says she's watched Slime Isekai three times and switched to reading the manga and later the light novel when she ran out of episodes and translated chapters to read. Different strokes for different folks. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That's the protagonist caught in a tug of war between two female characters in his pseudo harem. I did say it was weird.

Search (2020) | E01-10

I checked this out for Jang Dong-yoon, who I'm happy to report was eminently likeable even when his character was being a dumbass. For a mystery series, this show was plenty stupid and I've lost count of how many times I caught myself metaphorically scratching my head. From a common sense stand point, the characters do things that make no fucking sense. I'm disappointed this drama didn't live up to potential because it has a bunch of solid actors (Park Yoon, Moon Jeong-hee, Lee Hyun-wook) and they are the reason I kept watching when the writing kept going to Idiotville. When I was just about ready to call it quits, they turn Yeon Woo-jin's character into a DMZ monster, which pretty much guaranteed I was staying 'til the end. I know he was only a cameo but man was he criminally underused. I'm glad there are only 10 episodes. There's only so much story they can milk out of this premise. Search would probably be better as a movie.